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The three men have a civil suit pending against the state of Louisiana, one the US Supreme Court ruled has merit based on claims that their Eight Amendment "cruel and unusual punishment" rights were violated. It will be heard in the US Middle District Court in Baton Rouge, but don't look for any more justice this time than earlier, especially for poor and disadvantaged blacks.
King's autobiography was published in 2008 titled, "From the Bottom of the Heap: The Autobiography of a Black Panther." He's a member of the Common Ground Collective, a decentralized NGO network formed post-Katrina to help New Orleans residents. He's also an international speaker at colleges and community centers in America and before parliaments in the Netherlands, South Africa and Portugal.
Still in isolation, Wallace and Woodfox are reported to be in poor health, the result of decades of mistreatment. AI says Wallace's "osteoarthritis is aggravated by inadequate exercise, functional impairment, memory loss and insomnia."
Woodfox suffers from "claustrophobia, hypertension, heart disease, chronic renal insufficiency, diabetes, anxiety and insomnia."
Both men are victims of racism, retribution for their activism, prosecutorial injustice, and a state prison system the Louisiana ACLU calls "the most abhorrent in terms of violence and horrible living conditions."
Louisiana has the highest per capita incarceration in the world, the ACLU getting over 80 complaints a month about guard beatings, overcrowding, poor medical care or its denial, mistreatment of mentally ill prisoners, squalid living conditions, and denial of access to lawyers.
The Bill of Rights grants constitutional protections to everyone, including persons in custody, regardless of their crime. Especially abhorrent are rigged trials, judicial complicity, wrongful convictions, and appellate unfairness to keep innocent victims incarcerated.
Angola's Horrific History
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